Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To the Member’s point, he talks about the local economic development and the Housing Corporation in partnership with the LHOs are some of the biggest employers in the community whether it’s guys doing maintenance or during the summer you can have up to 16 or 17 people if you’re doing a lot of the M and I work yourself. So we contribute quite a bit in that regard. The local materials, I think I made reference to yesterday, were possible. We’d love to use local materials for construction, however they do have to meet a standard and if those materials were to meet the...

What’s that? I’m sorry, Mr. Chairman. I’m not paying attention. First of all, our intent is to have the assessments transferred in June. Then this is already here, so in the next budget there will be no line item to that effect.

We still want to put the units in the community. Land tenure is a very important issue and we can’t, as the Member actually pointed out as he was speaking, we can’t go to what he said, the day was where Housing...and I don’t think Housing just took anything, but maybe they worked out some agreements with people staying on those particular lands and I think we’re seeing more and more of that today where maybe there was some misinformation or misinterpretation or misunderstanding, but those things can be worked out.

The land tenure is the most important part, because we need to make sure we have...

The Member is correct; these two, the mortgage collection specialists will be part of our operations from this point on.

Thank you. We appreciate those comments. I just wanted to respond saying that we are looking at that right now, is having folks that are looking after their own houses as part of this program. Also, I think that there was a concern with elders and people that didn’t understand that were applying for a program, but there’s an opportunity there for somebody to attend the program on their behalf.

That is correct. We’re looking to make great improvement this year. As I mentioned before, we’re hiring some mortgage collection people. That should help. We’re having more and more people approaching us now to work out repayment plans and the message is getting out there that if you want to qualify for some of the programs, then it’s to your best interest to address your arrears issue and you’re usually able to qualify for some of the programs afterwards. So we are looking forward to a big improvement in the coming year and when the Housing Corporation is before this committee again next year...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Some of the positions are for implementing the Canada Economic Action Plan stimulus money. As we know, there’s more and more projects getting out the door and these are technical folks that we have on the ground to assist with that. Their positions will be lapsing once we’re through with the money, but at this point there was so much money being poured into the communities and into the regions we felt that we needed some extra help just to deal with this money.

The others are mortgage collection specialists. We’ve heard the discussion on arrears and we’re looking for some...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, for the 2010-11 infrastructure budget there has been no decision as to… The Member is right; this is a budget that’s approved here in the Legislative Assembly. So there’s been no decision as to moving any of the projects around. If there is, once the budget is approved, if we have issues where there might be some projects moved around, then, obviously, the Member is correct, we’d let the Members know.

We’ll have to follow up on the Member’s concern about people in the communities getting phone calls. If the Member will allow us to follow up with that and see...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. With a lot of the money that we’ve gotten from the Canada Economic Action Plan, a lot of it was going more towards the multi-family-type units where there would be a cost savings to maintain and operate. We’re starting to see a lot more of that within the Housing Corporation, but a good portion of the money that we did receive was to go towards doing the multi. Also, a lot of it was going towards some of the repairs needed in the community and we’ve had some communities say that they’ve never had so much work before from the Housing Corporation. A lot of that is...

Yes, I will, Mr. Chair.